Mahmudullah looking for answers

Bangladesh cricket team’s ICC T20 World Cup campaign is over, but skipper Mahmudullah Riyad is still looking for answers as he was looking lost and clueless in his press conference after the Tigers’ match against Australia.

Mahmudullah was asked multiple times, initially in sugarcoated words and later blatantly, regarding his resignation from captaincy or retirement from the T20 format, but he left all those decisions up to Bangladesh Cricket Board.

“These things are not in my hand; the decision has to come from the (Bangladesh) Cricket Board. From my side, I always tried to safeguard this team, I tried to bring the best performance out of the team. Probably there were lacking in my captaincy. Better leave all these to cricket board,” he said after the match against Australia on Thursday.

Mahmudullah is also unaware of why Bangladesh performed so poorly in this T20 World Cup despite having a nice build-up,

“We did not perform well. Why? possibly I am also looking for the answer. We sat together, talked to each other, tried to find out where we are falling short and why, but I am still looking for answers to those questions,” he said.

“We have performed very poorly, apart from our matches against Sri Lanka and West Indies, we did not do well. It is very frustrating, as I said, I don’t even know the answers to many questions. Probably we will find it when we go back home. Let’s see,” he added.

Bangladesh lost both the official warm-up games against Sri Lanka and Ireland and started the first qualifying round with a defeat against Scotland.

Mahmudullah thinks that the flow was lost initially.

“Flow was very important for us. We started with a defeat against Scotland, in the next match we turned around against Oman, but I was not happy. After qualifying (to super-12), our batting clicked against Sri Lanka in the first match, but we unfortunately lost. As I said, the flow was very important for us that we lost, and we could not manage to get out of it,” said the T20 captain.

Throughout the tournament, cricketers tried to answer their critics verbally during the press conferences, rather than talking with bat or ball.

Mahmudullah thinks that bubbles-fatigue forced the players to their breaking point.

“Everyone has a breaking point. I am not giving any excuse but see, after the Dhaka Premier League, we went to Zimbabwe. Then after coming back, we played against Australia, next was New Zealand. After a few days, we left for Oman. By this time, you know what bubble fatigue can do. Possibly I went emotional and said those words,” he told the media.

About all the hurling criticisms in social media, Mahmudullah said, “If you don’t perform well and you know that after working hard for the entire day you were unable to do well, at that time outside criticism does not impact. Neither the person nor the team, nothing is performing. We were worried about our performance, the team’s performance.”

Even the BCB president lashed out in the media after Bangladesh lost to Scotland. Mahmudullah said that such interventions don’t really impact the team’s performance that much.

“Papon Bhai (BCB President Nazmul Hasan) even talked to us, he talked positively. He speaks what he feels right. But as I said, in the day everything matters on our performance,” he told the media.